On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 5:36 PM, Linus Torvalds<torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:> On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 5:11 PM, Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof@frijolero.org> wrote:>> -MODULE_LICENSE("Dual BSD/GPL");>> +MODULE_LICENSE("GPL-Compatible");>> I really don't see the point.>> This makes things *worse*.>> "Dual BSD/GPL" actually tells you something: it tells you that you can> take that code, and use it in a BSD project.>> In contrast "GPL-compatible" tells you nothing at all.>> So you are actually removing real information, and just making things> harder for everybody.

Its a good point that we are not declaring the exact license used forsoftware, and while that is useful the "Dual BSD/GPL" tag ismisleading. As I see it there are four options:

1) Use this as a technical artifact only to ensure symbols we declareEXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL() will only be used by GPL-Compatible modules. Alsouse the GPL-Compatible tag as annotated by this patch to annotatethis. Then add another tag to specific the exact license, which is notanything of an artifact but just informational to the binary modulebut also software developer reviewing code. This last part wouldclarify the exact license.

2) We keep extending the list of MODULE_LICENSE() with all thedifferent GPL-Compatible licenses we are comfortable with. This listis pretty outdated already. This means we keep chugging along andadding more licenses.

3) Leave things as is, and clarify this. I think this confusesdevelopers though, and for sharing purposes it would be nice. Hencethe patch. You have no idea how many e-mails I have had to deal withto address this. People really think this is impossible. In fact wehad a flamewar eons ago because a few of us didn't know this waspossible to help the BSDs. Not just developers, I think there are evenmaintainers not too sure about this.

4) Use the patch and leave it to the person who wants to extract codeto figure out the exact module license.

Option 1) seems to me to provide the best alternative but leaves openthen the question of whether or not we need to keep tabs of acceptedGPLv2 compatible licenses we accept or leave this as informational.Option 4) handles the technical artifacts we care about but gives somehomework to consumers.